posted at 8:18 pm on June 29, 2009 by Allahpundit

Just days after reestablishing diplomatic ties with Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is accusing the U.S. of staging a coup in Honduras as President Obama expressed concern over President Manuel Zelaya’s arrest…

Chavez, who succeeded on his second try to push a similar referendum that allows his indefinite re-election, lashed out at the U.S. and Obama in Caracas, alleging “the Yankee empire had a lot to do” with the “coup d’etat” against his fellow leftist leader.

“I call on the president of the United States to issue a statement as we have, rejecting this affront, which not only goes against Honduras but against all the peoples of Latin America,” Chavez said.

At the risk of exploding what little right-wing blog cred I have left, I can’t believe The One would align himself with Chavez without some compelling reason. Even if you believe the worst conservative suspicions about him, i.e. that he’s some lefty dictator fanboy, the political price he’ll pay for doing this is too steep to justify it unless there’s a greater good he’s aiming at. Witness Drudge’s headline right now (“Obama lashes out at Honduras; sides with Chavez, Castro”) or Krauthammer in the clip below offering a useful rule of thumb for Latin America. Barry’s going to eat a ton of shinola for this — but why? What’s the strategic benefit? Is he so focused on isolating Iran that he’s willing to take Chavez’s side on Honduras in order to peel him away from Ahmadinejad? If so, how does that affect Iran’s nuclear agenda? I don’t get it. The most likely explanation is that Obama’s simply obsessed with “repairing America’s image in the world,” and if that means occasionally taking the side of a Chavista stooge to prove he’s the anti-Bush, then that’s what he’ll do.

Exit question: If the whole government is against Zelaya, why didn’t they just impeach him?

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

This is a legal removal of a president that is in violation of the Honduran Constitution.

Zelaya’s actions of the past 5 months have been in blantant disregard for the Honduran Constitution, which he sought to rewrite, the Honduran Supreme Court, which he has undermined, the Honduran Congress, which he has tried to delegitimize, his own party that has resisted Hugo Chavez, and 72% of the Honduran public, that feel disenfranchised by Zelaya.

This was not a coup. Zelaya was legally removed by the military at the request of the Honduran Congress and the Honduran Supreme Court that have the following two articles of the Honduran Constitution as the legal authority to do so

TRANSLATION Article 239 The citizen that has been the head of the Execute Branch cannot be President or Vice-President (again).
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

While your intial efforts in flitting about in order to acquit Obama of either rank hypocrisy on the difference between his positions on Iran and Honduras or, even worse, Obama’s trend toward defending the status quo ante because potential diplomatic opportunities might be lost if the same parties who repudiated Bush could not, post-Obama, be brought into the hope-and-change fold via the magic-tingle of the Obama zeitgeist, tended toward the comic–you at least have the guts to admit you have no idea what The One is up to.
While your initial, “the Honduran military has ‘historic links with the US’” argument has been dropped faster than Robert Gibbs’ Iranian Twitter account, I notice that each of your subsequent posts regarding Honduras contains an exponential number of disclaimers that generally take the form of–”Of course Obama has a Plan!, but what!?”–each more expressive of your wide-eyed befuddlement than the last: what is the strategy!? What is the advantage for the President!? How can I get a job at HuffPo!?
(ok, that last one was just a post in your head)

Did you ever consider that Obama, like Carter, is a creature of ideology? That Obama believes diplomacy can solve all ills?, government can disabuse its citizens from, not just economic, but also moral quandries?

Exit Question: Why do Obama’s defenders, like Mara Liasson in the clip above, insist that when Obama says Zelaya should remain as President, or US support of Iranian protesters in Iran would actually hurt their efforts, he–in reality–intends the EXACT opposite?
See, Obama doesn’t really mean what he says, he has to say that!!

Maybe it’s just my Masters talking but I’ve been around enough academics (and I think we can all agree that Obama represents the academic left in his views) to know that they simply support “Democratic Socialism” and revolutionary governments like Iran. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met through all common sense aside to support Chavez because he “supported the arts” and was “the people’s choice” and those same people often downplayed Iran’s barbarity.

Everyone on the right in Latin America runs brutal death squads, according to them, and everyone on the left is a hero. It is a subject even Allahpundit has broached in the past, academic leftism and it’s consequences. Why is it shocking that a man who got elected by being the most popular prof. running a seminar on revolutionary literature would support the left in Latin America?

He was friends with Bill Ayers, his church preached Liberation theology. I mean does he have to wear a beret and carry an AK 47 for you to believe him hen he talks revolution?

Chavez needs the bogeyman USA to legitimate his existence. Obama thinks he can talk to these people and they will like us and the whole world will be just peachy utopia. Obama thinks that they just misunderstand us. What would Chavez talk about if not how evil the USA is? We need to over throw Chavez and reinstall democracy. We are dammed if we do and dammed if we don’t, so we might as well make the world a better place. If not the USA to bring Freedom to people of the world then who? Chavez is busy trying to support communist insurgences world wide and Iran is helping build roadside bombs in Iraq. We need to fight back. God is on our side. No matter what you hear from main stream media the people of the world love the USA and its fight for freedom. It’s only news when someone hates us. Some people are envious and feel pain that they are not as lucky to born in USA. We need to do the right thing and help people get freedom. These evil countries that suppress their people and are against the USA will be a problem for US. So why not make them free?

I really must object to your caption under BHO’s picture as “Sucker.” As Elijah Cummings (7th District, MD) so ably instructed us last fall during his “interview” of Neel KashKari, a person left “holding the bag” or blindly doing the bidding of another is a “chump.”

Obama is anti Israel, Chavez is anti Israel Zelaya is anti Israel, Hamass is anti Israel, Syria is anti Israel, Hezbollah is anti Israel and Amamadjihadi and Khatamei are anti Israel. So Obama is supporting his friends with the same world view. No great rocket science there.

sjramos on June 30, 2009 at 1:06 AM
.
You are a goldmine. Thanks for your input.
.
Some people (Chavez) who scream that the what is happening is an affront are really being disingenuous to the world. What they require is to be given a great be mirror to talk into. Being a dictator alone is an affront unto those who chose to have a democratic republic. Chavez should know this, but he is to full of his own arrogance to allow his unawareness to be exposed to his fellow latin Americans. It is a simple posture that all dictators make during their reigns. Just check out Iran and what is currently happening there.
.
As far as Obama is concerned with Chavez’s stooge and Chavez himself for that matter regarding Honduras political future. It is just part of his overall DOCTRINE of oppression. This Obama doctrine is to make alliances and or of allegiances with all marxist/socialist/communist/dictators/tyrants and about whom, ever is the regarding concurrent theme of Obama’s pretense of remaking American according to his vision. Why does Obama flatter himself with the idea of having an infrastucture like China? Allahpundit, I see no gray area in our President Obama deliberate agenda. I am not under his guise of smoke and mirrors of making the world liking the U.S more or less. What he says makes his cult not reconsider the truth. What is to be the truth? I know what he says is false because it is what he is planning on doing and what he has already done that matters. His goal is to undermine our own U.S. Constitution and our way of life, liberty and our own private means to own and keep property. Open your eyes to the projections before us of overspending, burdensome taxation, nationalizing the rest of the privite sector etc…….
.
.
If you can’t see it, then you too belong to the “Yes we can” group of people. I am with the “No you won’t” group.

The trainwreck that is the Obama administration will soon collapse under it’s own incompetence.

The question is “what will the Country do once he becomes politically irrelevant?” I could see the public being gullable enough to elect this guy, but I don’t see the public continuing to tollerate the crap smorgasboard this guy is trying to shove down America’s throat.

He has only been in office 6 months and his armour is already rusting off.

AP, your expecting rational thought from irrational people. Obama and his followers (Pelosi, Waxman, et al) are addicted to power, it’s all they live for, and Obama is the first president in a long time that hasn’t had to worry about media scrutiny (despite getting the occasional laughs). Be skeptical at your own peril.

This is part of the whole BS about leftist governments favoring “the poor” and conservatives “favoring the rich” and “oppressing the poor.” These leftists are still refighting the battles of the 1970s when the “right” in Latin America really was fascistic and oppressive. Now it’s the Leftists who are turning to fascist tactics like this illegal referendum Zelaya tried to pull off.

Obama is a child of this 1970s school of thought on the Left. He really wants to embrace Zelaya as well as Chavez because they are supported by “the poor” and opposed by “the rich.” In Obama’s view, Zelaya has “legitimacy” because the masses support him, no matter what the Constitution actually says. It’s a tired, dated, and discredited worldview. And the tough part of it is that few Americans really understand this, so they will just believe whatever BS comes out of Obama’s mouth at the moment.

I think we have to seriously consider the likelihood that Obama just doesn’t see it in the terms you outline, AP.

He doesn’t think of Zelaya as a Chavista stooge, preparing to total the Honduran constitution and keep the fires of the Latino Axis of Evil stoked.

He really does think, rather, that Chavez is on the right side — along with Morales, Correa, Ortega, and Castro. So if Zelaya is on that side too, he’s cool.

I’m betting Obama would rather join ALBA than lure its members into FTAA (and make the latter a real going concern).

The truth is, Obama has done absolutely nothing to disprove this theory. People who dismiss it do so mainly because they just don’t want to believe it: that we have elected ourselves a Yanqui “Bolivarian” radical.

I think he’s using this as an opportunity to tell us that military use against internal enemies of the Constitution is an absolute no-no, even when a leader refuses to vacate a seat he is not (or no longer) constitutionally eligible to hold (as per the Honduran Constitution elduende posted above demanding removal of a president who tries to change the constitutional term limit).

Obama knows it will soon be a very pertinent question here too, and he wants to render the US public incapable of even thinking about fighting for its Constitution.

It’s a serious question. A military friend told me about different levels of awareness in law enforcement. White (normal), yellow (something seems fishy), red (kill or be killed), and black (dead or at peace with the enemy winning). He said when you’re in the red zone you fight because everything you hold dear is at risk. Either the enemy dies or your family, the rule of law, etc dies. There is no way to “live and let live”.

We are fast approaching that point for this nation. If Obama can put us all in the black state (which the UN and our schools’ obedience to it has been working on for a long time now) the nation will give up without a fight.

Is the fight worth it? America gets a practice run at answering the question on Honduras. But the practice test will be followed up with the real thing. Get your answers ready.

Reuters propaganda: “Honduras’ interim government battled on Tuesday against a tide of international support for ousted President Manuel Zelaya.”

Exit question: If the whole government is against Zelaya, why didn’t they just impeach him?

Synchronization with all that was occurring at that very moment. It takes TIME to legislate. The Judicial Branch Supreme Court already ruled along with the nation’s Constitution that Zelaya was acting illegally. It was going to be a battle between the Judicial and the Executive vying for the Military. Evidently it had to go down as it did because of what Zelaya and Chavez were doing and had in the works given just a bit more time. TIME.

Synchronization with all that was occurring at that very moment. It takes TIME to legislate. The Judicial Branch Supreme Court already ruled along with the nation’s Constitution that Zelaya was acting illegally. It was going to be a battle between the Judicial and the Executive vying for the Military. Evidently it had to go down as it did because of what Zelaya and Chavez were doing and had in the works given just a bit more time. TIME.

maverick muse on June 30, 2009 at 11:46 AM

Got it in one! That is exactly what Zelaya/Chavez needed…more time to manipulate the situation.

Incidently, Zelaya, at the behest of Chavez, has vowed to return to Tegucigalpa to “retake control” this Thursday.

The Honduran Government said that if he returns he will be arrested at the airport. They can’t afford to leave him running around the country causing trouble.

Chavez is counting on this and is stoking the fires to create a crisis he can exploit to call for and justify an invasion of Honduras.

I would remind all that in Bolivia, “You sleep with the fish” is the unspoken reality for the ousted party members. Beware the malocchio follow through from The One who taints diplomacy with, “I won. I trump.”

I saw that announcement headline on Drudge, the malicious “I will be back” terminator.

If it were a military COUP, Zelaya would be dead instead of on an enforced vacation. It is not a coup. And if Zelaya returns from his “vacation” in Costa Rica, he should be arrested and impeached or whatever the Honduran Constitution stipulates since it does stipulate his actions as absolutely ILLEGAL, so illegal that he forfeits his office for having attempted his own COUP to oust his nation’s Constitution and Supreme Court and Legislature. The Honduran officials should be processing his impeachment at this very hour, formalizing every jot and tittle in place.

I wonder about Costa Rica. No army. “Peaceful” until it gets coopted by someone like Zelaya. Playing the neutral game, I wonder if the Costa Rican government was even consulted, but rather simply advised that Zelaya was on his way. Regardless, they obviously gave diplomatic permission for Zelaya’s “vacation”. Even Costa Rica, the most “stable” peaceful traditional Central American country is plagued by over 20% population in abject poverty.

No offense, you don’t have any. Bozo provides plenty of proof regarding his true ideology, His friends, family, actions and his mentor complete the picture of who and what he is, yet you refuse to see it.

Can’t Obama just be stupid?
Emily M. on June 29, 2009 at 8:21 PM

Yes, he is stupid and uneducated. He slid through school on the grease of affirmative action instead of merit. Which is why he will not release his transcripts. That doesn’t change the fact that he is a marxist and an anti american.

Arrest warrants against Zelaya have been issued. Looks like he’ll be returning with a group of shills and lackeys from the UN, the OAS, and that socialist witch that runs Argentina.

Costa Rica has to steer clear of this mess or they’ll get swallowed. Being in the middle of a right versus left latin american power play is bad joojoo for a nation with no security forces. They are a non actor and that means they have to rely on the UN and more realistically the U.S. for protection which, with the Obama regime in control means they are on their own.

Even if you believe the worst conservative suspicions about him, i.e. that he’s some lefty dictator fanboy, the political price he’ll pay for doing this is too steep to justify it unless there’s a greater good he’s aiming at.

Has he given any indication yet that anything like the “greater good” is his motivation? Of course, I suppose it all depends on how you define “greater good.”

I tried to explain what Zelaya did that precipitated his ouster to an acquaintance, who stated that the governments of all the other Latin American countries, the EU, the UN, and Obama have denounced this “coup”, therefore I’m wrong.

There is one and only one reason Obama does anythng.
The strategic benefit to everything Obama does is very apparent,if one chooses to look at the Obama administration as a whole.It is not by accident that he has appointed nothing but thieves and incompetants to cabinet positions.
Obama is power-mad.He wants to destroy America in every way.Aiding those want to kill us,destroying the economy,creating hidden taxes by perpetrating the biggest lie ever told,in order to enslave the middle class working people,supporting Socialism and the dictators who foster it.
What other reason can there be,other than the total destuction of the American way of life,and the installation of himself as dictator of a Banana Republic that used to be the United States.

Allahpundit: The Honduran constitution doesn’t have an impeachment mechanism. I think they should get one, but this explains why the only way of getting that guy out of there was through sending the troops over to the palace. It’s the best they had and I think it was as legally done as they could have gotten it. If they didn’t get that guy out of there, they’d lose their entire democracy.

Obama and crew had better change their legal tune or as Krauthammer mentioned above Zelaya will get back in. If that were to happen El Salvador and Guatemala would be next.

Chavez and crew have effectively figured out how to hollow out democracy from within under the pretense of “free” elections. Latin America for the most part has a small wealthy class, small middle class and a very large poor class. As a result of this old Spanish model, demagogues come along and give false hopes to the poor who will grasp at anything. As a result Latin America spends its history constantly restarting at zero. Once a middle class starts to develop a Chavez like character shows up to take the country back a couple of hundred years. Then another civil war and so it goes.

This is the plan for Honduras. At the moment Obama by his stupidity is enabling this process.

Obama-nation is apposing the constitutional removal of Zelaya from power, because he has no intention of leaving the presidency of the USofA. No matter what the constitution, or the electorate has to say about it.

Sooooo, its ok for “The One” to meddle in Honduras but not ok to meddle in Iran? Oh sure, that makes perfect sense. Wouldn’t you hate to admit you voted for this clown or worse yet, have to support this idiocy?

WASHINGTON (AP)—The White House says it sees no acceptable solution to the ouster of the president of Honduras other than returning him to power.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that State Department officials have been in touch with ousted President Manuel Zelaya, and the White House is continuing to work on the situation.

Gibbs says that if Zelaya does come to Washington, he’ll most likely meet with officials at the State Department.

Did Myra say that Pres. Obama wasn’t working to get Zelaya back in office? Is she kidding herself? The UN and World Bank are doing that and the Obama Administration is siding with them. How else can you interpret it? Leftist are naive and idiots or just plain destructive.

I just had to cross post this from another H/A thread on the Venezuela/Chavez & Drugs, as it pertains to the why asked by Allah. Duh! He’s a freaking authoritarian commie dude!

Lest anyone forgets, FARC is a Columbian Marxist group that funds itself with drug money and is largely supported by Chavez. This makes for an interesting tie-in with last years story when the Columbians conducted across border raid into Ecuador and siezed the hard drives from FARC computers.

The hard drives provided conclusive evidence of Chavez’s complicity with FARC and had a startling reference to an unnamed Obama rep assuring Chavez not to worry as therre would be a new man in the oval soon.

Obamam is a Marxist plain and simple. From his parents, his grandpararents, his CPUSA mentor in Hawaii Frank Mardshall Davis, to his innordinant amount support of Marxist SDS/Weathermen in the election.

Bill Ayers was just the tip of the ice-berg, just look at the names, Marilyn Katzhis Chg spokesperson, Carl Davidson & Mike Klonsky of Progressives for Obama, Dale & Wade Rathke founders of ACORN, Paul Booth of AFCSME, Todd Gitlin and Andy Stern of the SEIU who were on the conference call with Arnold threatning Cali’s stimulus funds. All these people are former SDS/Weathermen who organization has been shown to have been financed by the former USSR.

It seems Berzehnev knew of what he spoke when he said it was only a matter of time.

“Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds … and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking,” its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol.

Drug-related violence appears to be up in Honduras.
Homicides surged 25 percent from some 4,400 in 2007 to more than 7,000 in 2008 while more than 1,600 people were killed execution-style, suggesting drug gang involvement, according to the Central American Violence Observatory.

In October, Zelaya proposed legalizing drug use as a way of reducing the violence, and doubling the country’s police force, which reached 13,500 last year, up from 7,000 in 2005, according to the State Department report.

Obama now stands against President Uribe, the most popular anti Communist president in Colombian history, and makes common cause with the most hated Communist dictators in Latin American history; Chavez, Ortega, and the Castros.

President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia stands with democracy and against Zelaya and Chavez!!!!

Says the principal of non-intervention is the one that needs to guide the actions of all nations with regards to the Honduran situation. Basically says that this is a Honduran internal matter and all outside actors need to butt out